For Sale: Iraq

[Francis]

Riverbend's latest

For Sale: Iraq
For Sale: A fertile, wealthy country with a population of around 25 million… plus around 150,000 foreign troops, and a handful of puppets. Conditions of sale: should be either an American or British corporation (forget it if you’re French)… preferably affiliated with Halliburton. Please contact one of the members of the Governing Council in Baghdad, Iraq for more information.

To hear of the first of the economic reforms announced by Kamil Al-Gaylani, the new Iraqi Finance Minister, you’d think Iraq was a Utopia and the economy was perfect only lacking in… foreign investment. As the BBC so wonderfully summarized it: the sale of all state industries except for oil and other natural resources. Basically, that means the privatization of water, electricity, communications, transportation, health… The BBC calls it a ‘surprise’… why were we not surprised?

After all, the Puppets have been bought- why not buy the stage too? Iraq is being sold- piece by piece. People are outraged. The companies are going to start buying chunks of Iraq. Or, rather, they’re going to start buying the chunks the Governing Council and CPA don’t reward to the ‘Supporters of Freedom’.

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[izzie]

1. And like the countries before us that did this......

We will need our army to go in and keep all we own safe. If we look at the Brits we will see that they really needed a small number of troups to line up most of the world.I am sure that the neo=cons love this, as do the fat corp cats and the Bible thumpers will say it is our God given rights to own their water, lights and TV station.We will have become what we had a war to get rid of.

[scottc]

2. Corporate looting

The privatisation of the water has already been decided upon. Bechtel Corp have that one in the bag. The corporation with a disgusting record of workers rights abuses, and exploitation of the poor have been given free reign to terrorise the citizens of Iraq by controlling access to the world's most precious resource. If you need any further proof of this, simply look at Bechtel's record in Bollivia. They took over the privatisation of the water for one of Bollivia's biggest cities, and promtly increased the price of water by four times. This constituted 3 quarters of the average wage being spent on water alone. When the Bollivian people held strikes, a boy was murdered. The fallout from the blockades was such that the government was forced to send Bechtel packing, whereupon they emptied their bank accounts, and left a quarter of a million dollars in unpaid debts. They then sued the poor nation of Bollivia for 17 million dollars.

In my opinion, Bechtel deserves to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, and the leadership sent to jail. Instead, they are continuing to enjoy government contract after government contract, despite all of the screw ups that reguarly come from them.

[realFedUp]

3. Welcome to DU scottc

interesting info on Bechtel.

[newyawker99]

4. Hi scottc!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: